


click to translate

by seventhswan



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Female POV, Romantic Comedy, bilingualism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2724749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy has some feelings about Natasha, Steve tries to help but falls flat on his face, and Clint is not a carrier pigeon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	click to translate

It’s five thirty in the morning, and someone in Stark Tower has left the radio on.

Darcy wouldn’t normally be in the Avengers’ lounge before dawn, but she has a final in a few hours and if she didn’t get out of her apartment she was going to – to break something, or cry, maybe. Jane had said she was going to see Bruce in the lab, and did Darcy want...

That had been ten hours ago. Darcy isn’t sure exactly when she fell asleep on the couch, but the palm under her cheek has a little drool on it, and it’s still wet. Gross.

She realises that it isn’t the radio as soon as she gets to her feet and starts to creep towards the source. There’s no backing, and the sound’s too raw, too immediate. Natasha’s voice – and it has to be hers, has to, the words through the door are fuzzy, unfamiliar - is smoky and surprisingly delicate, rising over the sound of her putting together some breakfast. Darcy leans against the doorjamb, watches through the slight gap for a second. It’s a song she doesn’t know, in a language she doesn’t speak.

She’s certain Natasha can sense her there, but she doesn’t say anything. The song continues at the same volume, settling on Darcy’s tense shoulders like warm hands. Eventually, she comes away from the door and slides down the wall to sit at the bottom. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes.

When she wakes, there’s a blanket over her, a glass of water and a plate of pancakes placed just far enough away that she can’t disturb them in her sleep.

|

Darcy aces the final, and thinks about Natasha maybe twice as often as she did before. As a result, at this point she’s losing a pretty ridiculous amount of time to it. She keeps thinking about the song, and the blanket – about Natasha letting Darcy in, showing a part of herself that she absolutely didn't have to reveal.

Anyway, of the three Russian speakers Darcy knows, Steve is definitely the worst – but he’s also the one she’s least afraid of, so she picks him to help her.

He squints suspiciously at her over the cookies she’s brought as an embarrassingly naked bribe. She wishes he’d put one in his mouth - she has it on authority they're good, they've even brought Bruce out of the beginning of a rage spiral. They'd definitely be enough to get him to stop looking at her like that.

“Darcy,” he says again, shifting a little, “you really would be better with Buck, prob’ly. I mean, I only started learning recently.”

He should definitely eat a cookie - it'd glue his mouth shut. Darcy isn't stingy on the caramel. She looks significantly at Steve and then at them, in case being in the Tower lately has given her telepathy.

“I only want you to write thank you, and her name in Cyrillic. I think you’d have better handwriting than Mr Barnes, right?” she says. Her telepathy doesn't seem to be working.

A corner of Steve’s mouth puckers up a little like he’s trying not to laugh. Darcy groans and slaps a hand over her mouth. Steve is completely the worst.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” she says, agonized. God, _handwriting_ , and Barnes’ arm…

“I know,” Steve says, all bright and sweet, the way he’s been every day since Barnes came back. Darcy maybe once upon a time nursed a little hero worshipper’s crush on Steve, and seeing him so happy lights her up even now. “I was laughing more at the way you call him Mr Barnes, like he’s a teacher or somebody’s grandpa. You don’t normally stand on ceremony, is all.”

Darcy makes a face.

“He’s not a total goof like you,” she says. “Maybe I think he deserves some consideration and respect.”

Steve clasps a hand to his breast, but then he pulls the card towards him, looking suddenly a lot more eager. He probably just wants to get rid of her and get into the cookie tin.

“Wounded,” he says cheerfully as he uncaps the pen, “I’m wounded, Darcy. I won’t tell Buck you’re scared of him, even, in case you’ve got some more zingers like that in store for me.”

“Oh my God,” Darcy whines, “you’re impossible. I’m giving a tell-all interview to the papers about what a jerk you are.”

Steve, grinning, does the final flourish on Natasha’s name and hands the card over. The writing looks utterly beautiful.

“There,” he says. “That’ll tell her exactly what you want to say.”

Then he reaches over for the tin of cookies and starts calling for Barnes, so Darcy beats a hasty retreat.

|

The idea of actually _giving the card_ to Natasha makes Darcy’s stomach clench up. Like, actually imagining standing in front of her, holding the card, and then handing it over, and waiting while Natasha reads it? That thought makes Darcy turn over in bed and groan into her pillow. It’s too embarrassing.

So she gives it to Bruce, who’s Natasha’s secret favorite, and like the sunbeam he is he promises solemnly to get it to Natasha. Darcy thanks him and runs out of the Tower to her ten AM class, her scarf flapping behind her while she almost gets mowed down by some lunatic at a crosswalk, and mostly she forgets all about it. Mostly.

Later, sometime after seven, she’s just managed to flick sauce from her noodles onto the lens of her glasses when someone knocks the door to the apartment. She figures she was probably due a study break anyway, if her motor control is fraying that badly.

It turns out her caller is, inexplicably, Clint Barton.

“What?” she says accidentally, maybe sort of rudely. It’s just… surprising.

“Natasha sent this with me,” Clint says, politely not mentioning the fact that Darcy looks like a nightmare, and like she hasn’t really slept in the last few days. She actually broke a comb in her hair yesterday. Okay, it was only one tooth and it was a pretty old comb, but it’s still probably not, you know. A good omen.

“Tasha’s stuck in a debrief, or she’d have brought it herself,” he says, shrugging, as she takes the note he's holding out. “Plus, there’s a really good Korean place beside your building who don’t deliver. Who doesn’t deliver now, though? Ridiculous.”

“That place _is_ really good,” Darcy says, trying to ignore the way her heart’s hammering. “Hope you have cash though, amigo.”

Clint groans and turns away.

“I passed like, ten ATMs on the way here, too. Better be the best damn Korean I’ve had in my life,” he says. He waves lazily over his shoulder. “Later, kid.”

|

The note only says **I normally don’t let someone say something like that to me until after we’ve at least had dinner – Natasha**.

Which is… confusing. She only lets people say thank you to her if they’ve been on a date? That doesn’t make sense. She turns the paper over, looking for something else, and only finds a – wait, is that Natasha’s phone number? She resists the urge to scream a little and jump up and down, in case her neighbors complain again. She has Natasha’s _phone number_. 

But, wait a minute. Does that mean – she’s supposed to call Natasha and ask her out? How did Natasha go from a thank-you note to…

She re-reads the note. **I normally don’t let someone say something like that…** The clue has to be there. Say something like what? 

Oh God. Something like _what_? She suddenly feels very, very worried and very, very stupid.

“Rogers,” she grits out, feeling ridiculously like a Scooby Doo villain. She grabs her cell and dials furiously, and when he answers, she doesn’t even give him a chance to say hello.

“Did you write something totally rude on that card for Natasha?” she demands, her voice maybe a _little_ high-pitched. She can practically hear Steve cringing over the line.

“Hold on a second, Darcy?” he says, clearly confused. “What are you talking about? I didn’t write anything rude, I wrote… Well, I might have used the word ‘sweetheart’, because it’s just so clear that you and Natasha, well… And I figured you, you know, and Thor said -“

That’s… a lot of information to take in at once. There’s a bit of movement on the other end of the line, and a voice that sounds like Barnes, asking what Steve had written. Steve’s answer is strange, a halting jumble of unfamiliar sounds – but Barnes’ bark of laughter isn’t.

“Wait,” Steve says, like something horrible is just dawning on him, “what did I say?”

Barnes’ answer is muffled, and Darcy is actually sort of glad. She’s not sure she wants to know. There’s a sound like the phone changing hands, and the next voice is Barnes’.

“Listen, kid,” he says, “don’t worry about it. Natasha’s a big girl, she won’t care. I’ll tell that computer to ease up on the romantic movies in Steve’s rotation, alright? He's really sorry.”

“Mr Barnes,” Darcy says, voice strained, “what exactly did I say to her?”

Barnes coughs. For a long second, Darcy’s sure she isn’t going to get an answer.

“It may have been… A slightly risqué… Offer,” he concedes eventually. “You may have called Natasha your little –“

“I don’t think I want to hear any more,” Darcy cuts in quickly, and there’s a definite sigh of relief that could only have been Steve.

|

Darcy spends the next two days holed up in her apartment experiencing total humiliation. She mainlines Netflix and has everything necessary delivered. She does NOT call Natasha, because she has absolutely no idea what she’d say, and probably Natasha was kidding about the whole dinner thing. Maybe if Darcy called then Natasha would just take her to task for desecrating Natasha’s beautiful native language. So, yeah. Hiding is an absolutely legitimate plan.

Of course then Clint arrives on her doorstep that evening.

“I’m gonna start charging for this service,” he tells her seriously, shoving a piece of paper in her direction and then immediately walking away. "I am not a carrier pigeon."

 **Darcy,** it says, **This is making me feel like I'm living in something from Thor and Steve's trashy book club, but at least if I feel ridiculous it might make you feel better. I liked the card. I talked to Steve, and I know you speak Spanish and I don’t. If we got together we could even it up, and you could trick _me_ into saying some outrageous things. (That line was Bruce’s. He couldn’t bring himself to tell me to write ‘dirty things’.)**

**\- Natasha**

Darcy smiles, she can’t not. She still feels stupid, but she owes Natasha this much. Her hand shakes on her phone but it stops the minute she says _hi,_ and hears Natasha say, bright as the voice Steve uses to talk about Barnes, _привет_.

|

It isn't until halfway through her second date with Natasha that Darcy thinks to wonder how on earth Steve knew the Russian for _that_ anyway.

She totally puts her elbow in her soup in shock, and when she wheezes an explanation to Natasha, Natasha just laughs and laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> The internet tells me that **привет** is 'hello'. As always I'm more than happy to be corrected by a Russian speaker!


End file.
